Sci-Fi Private Eye
by Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenberg (Editor)

I found this at www.BookCloseouts.com, a good source for inexpensive books on tape. I listened to it last week and I found it mostly great stuff. For you Phillip K. Dick-heads there is a nice PKD story War Games. It’s a lightweight story with a nice PKD twist about our perceptions and some nice Dick-ian touches. It is too short and it’s too bad that the rest of the book isn’t as much fun.

First, the bad news. Robert Silverberg has a story that kicks off the collection that takes up the first tape. Silverberg’s Getting Across is a dull story about dull people in a dull world. It has a nice enough theme and an interesting concept, but there is little in the story to get us involved enough to care about the ending.
The good news is David Wellen’s complex story Mouthpiece is my favorite of the group. It is very interesting and more like a PKD story than the one by PKD. It takes up most of the last two tapes. I have read this before, perhaps in its original magazine appearance, and I liked it then. I think it was in a 1970s F&SF.

The Poul Anderson story The Martian Crown Jewels is a bit of fun fluff, but not one of his masterpieces. If you like Berserkers, Fred Saberhagen’s story The Metal Murder, is some fun, but not very memorable. Asimov’s and Larry Niven had truly unmemorable stories in the collection, but they were the only ones that had actual detectives.

The price is right, though. $6.99 is good price for this 4 tape set.